A Simple Truth
by mtranc3
Summary: In which Isumi has a girlfriend, Akari has high hopes, Akira has an enchanting upper lip, and Shindou has an awakening.


**Title:** A Simple Truth  
**Author:** mtranc3  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairing: **Hikaru/Akira  
**Summary:** In which Isumi has a girlfriend, Akari has high hopes, Akira has an enchanting upper lip, and Shindou has an awakening.  
**Warnings: **Unbeta'd.  
**Author's Notes:** My first Hikago fic. This surreal, quiet, lovely anime made me do it!  
**Disclaimer:** Hikaru No Go belongs to Takeshi Obata and Yumi Hotta, no copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

Hikaru stopped looking at the game when it was Isumi-san's turn to play and focused on Touya's face instead. Touya, who was quiet, aloof (something which passed as arrogant, more often than not), but really, polite and helpful, and quite possibly unhappy. Not that he would ever know it, leading that protected life that his environment had arranged for him.

But if someone asked Touya, he would say that he had been quite content, until he had met Shindou Hikaru. Shindou, who had twisted the rules of his world, dragging Touya in the middle of the hurricane he had created. Confident, assured Shindou, who had the same potential as him. Who hadn't touched a Go stone til he was 12, and yet could play at the same level as him. Even though Touya had been taught that despite talent, years of hard work were also necessary for one to succeed in the Go world. Thus, if someone asked Touya if he were happy, he'd reply that until he met Shindou, he used to define happiness by his father's praise of his game, but when Shindou barged so rudely in his world, he discovered that Go wasn't a solitary pursuit, and that happiness, was finding someone who could play the game on equal terms with you. Always and forever.

But Shindou hadn't asked, so every time he looked at his rival's face, deep in concentration, eyes trained on the goban, upper lip protruding, (something that implied Touya was contemplating his opponent's last move), he couldn't help but feeling that he had somehow shattered Touya's perfectly ordered world. And even though Shindou himself had changed because of Touya, he secretly believed that the relationship had borne more on his rival, than it did on him

...

"Doesn't it make you sick?"

"Waya! You're just jealous that you haven't got a girlfriend yet."

Waya pretended to throw up in his soda drink. Hikaru was glad that Isumi-san and Miki-chan were so engrossed in their conversation (gazing lovingly at each other) to notice.

"And what about you Shindou-_kun_? I don't see any girls chasing after you!"

Hikaru chewed on a potato pensively and then gave out a slow grin. "I can get one whenever I want. I just don't want one." "Yet" he added as an afterthought.

Waya rolled his eyes. "Yes, keep telling yourself that Shindou. And then you'll suddenly be thirty years old, with 6 dan and not a single this-and-that experience..."

"Hey! I'll be a 9-dan by the time I'm thirty! Not to mention the titles..."

Waya slapped his forehead. "That was not the point, idiot!"

"You are just jealous that Isumi-san got you to it" Hikaru said again and laughed when Waya plastered his face on the table.

Come to think of it, Hikaru pondered privately, that none of them had had any girlfriends could not be played down by the fact that Isumi-san (who was the oldest) had just found himself a girl. Isumi-san was after all notoriously slow on the uptake. Maybe they should start hanging outside the Go institute more... and Go salons, and Go boards in general...

"We'll never get girlfriends..." Hikaru lamented and Waya's head on the table nodded affirmatively.

...

"Touya..."

"It was a perfectly justifiable move!"

"What?" Hikaru stared at the board and then waved his hands around. "No, um, I actually wanted to ask you something."

Akira, still a bit taken aback that Shindou didn't fight him on his move, straightened himself and nodded.

"Do you ever think about, you know... having a girlfriend?"

The look that Akira gave him was the one he reserved for Hikaru's outrageous joseki offerings, only he was looking as if the move happened somewhere on Hikaru's face and not on the board.

"Um... forget about it, it's... it's nothing!"

Before Hikaru could duck his head underneath the goban, Touya cleared his voice and sighed.

"It's normal for pros to be a bit... behind in these things. We don't have as much free time as other people our age, I suppose."

Hikaru, encouraged by this, jumped again in the conversation.

"Exactly! That's what I was trying to tell Waya, but he wouldn't listen. And if we don't have free time how are we supposed to meet girls? I mean, if we don't know any girls, how we will find a girlfriend...?"

Hikaru's indignation was cut short when Akira gave him one of his polite 'are you thick?' looks.

"What?"

"Shindou..." Akira started slowly, as if talking to someone mentally challenged."You already know a girl. Fujisaki-san..."

Hikaru frowned.

"Akari? But she's my friend..."

"And she _also_ happens to be a girl" Akira said, but he was now looking back at the goban, eager to return to the game.

"Ha..." Hikaru blinked and then grinned. "I never thought of that..."

...

When Akari went to Hikaru's house to ask him to the fall festival, it wasn't his acceptance without a single whine, that surprised her, but that Hikaru kept staring at her with a mixture of bewilderment and apprehension that made her extremely uneasy. And for some reason, happier than ever.

Akari was dressed in one of her mother's best yukata because the weather was still too hot, but her appearance was the least of her worries. She didn't register the taste of takoyaki on her palate, wasn't put-upon that Hikaru spent over half an hour at a Go stand, talking to some old people, or when he dragged her away from the Chinese fortune-teller. She had one thing on her mind and one thing only. But the timing had to be perfect. So when they were walking back, and lingered by the river bank to marvel at the fireworks and Hikaru's face was alternately lit and shadowed, she couldn't think of a better time. She leaned in and kissed him. Hikaru's dazed expression afterwards had to be a good sign. It just had to.

Hikaru accompannied Akari to her house, but when she went inside, flashing him one of her brightest smiles, he didn't go straight to his house. Instead, he returned to the river bank, wanting to sort out his thoughts, without his mother pestering him about the festival and dinner.

Akari had kissed him. It was very daring of her and Hikaru was genuinely impressed. He was also deeply and inexplicably confused. It wasn't that he didn't like Akari, it was just that he couldn't imagine her as a girlfriend, not after keeping watch so she could pee behind a tree in kindengarten.

But a kiss was a kiss, right? He should feel excited, shouldn't he? However, the wet touch and pressure of Akari's lips on his, did nothing to him. Squat. Wasn't that weird? Weren't kisses supposed to be wonderful and just... _wonderful_? Maybe Akari had done it wrong, he thought. Maybe a kiss should be done differently. He considered what he would do (in terms of mechanics) in the case he wanted to give a kiss, and suddenly Touya's upper lip flashed in his mind. Hikaru jumped up in surprise, and held his chest, shaking his head vigorously.

But the image of Touya's lip in his mind's eye wouldn't leave and then Hikaru imagined, or was it that he felt, capturing it between his own lips and his stomach lurched pleasantly, and he wanted to keep thinking about it, only for that sensation to return, or bang his head against the rocks to restart his brain. Because what was he thinking of, fantasising his rival's lips, and if they'd be wet like Akari's and soft, and -

"Arghh!"

Hikaru clutched his head, rubbing his forehead. Having a vivid imagination was a treacherous, treacherous thing, he discovered.

...

"Unless you have a really elaborate plan that I can't read into, that was a very stupid move, Shindou."

"So I have a very elaborate plan, then." Hikaru quipped, folding his arms.

"Because you never make stupid moves..."

Hikaru put on his best glare as he picked up a stone and then slammed it on the board. It created a very satisfying, echoing sound.

"How about _that, _Touya?"

Akira's eyebrow almost, but not quite, twitched.

"Shindou, it was my turn."

Hikaru blinked at him a few times, and retrieved his stone, cheeks red in embarrassment.

Akira was ready to make his move, but dropped the stone back in the goke, his fingers lingering there.

"Is there something wrong, Shindou? You're hardly concentrating on the game. Is it..." Akira paused and Hikaru noticed a slight look of horror dawning on his face.

"Could it be that it's too... _boring_ for you?"

Hikaru could almost laugh at how oblivious Touya could be sometimes. Only now he wanted to bang his head against the wall, or even better, bang Touya's head, so he wouldn't have to watch his mouth anymore. He took a calming breath and turned to his _rival_? _Friend_? _Secret crush_?

"Touya, not everything is about Go..."

"What are you -"

"Every time I see you" Hikary cut in quickly "I want."

"What?" Akira asked, feeling lost.

"I want to try something..."

"What, Shindou?"

Hikaru sighed, and when he opened his eyes, they were full of determination. The kind he saved for his games against Touya, alone.

"This." He leaned over the goban, knocking his goke over, scattering stones left and right, and brushed his lips against Touya's. He didn't feel much and wanted to try it again, but he was losing his balance and it was either straightening up, or falling into Touya's lap. He sat back, wings fluttering wildly inside his belly. Until he noticed Touya's expression; Akira was sitting still, a fragile, ashen expression setting on his features.

_Oh, no,_ Shindou thought with a frantic kind of urgency. _He's offended, he's offended!_

"Shindou... was that, a _kiss_?"

"Hn..." Hikaru mumbled, not being able to speak.

And it was as if Akira went out of slow-motion, into fast-forward, as he bumped his fist against his thigh, slate eyes, blazing in emotion.

"Don't you know you have to ask first? Am I an experiment, until you find a girlfriend, is that it?"

All the affront that was building up inside Hikaru, left him with a swoosh, and he held a smile back at the last moment. Touya - the _quick-study_ - would probably take it as mockery.

"Touya you - you have it all _wrong_!"

"Ever since I started thinking about these 'things', I couldn't stop thinking about you. About... about kissing you..." he lowered his voice and his eyes, but then looked back up at Touya, who was still standing oppsite him, despite everything, still listening to him.

"How it would be to steal your first kiss... only now I want to steal your second, and your third, and..."

"Shindou..." Touya said wonderingly, and then:

"What was then that conversation about girlfriends?"

Hikaru flashed a grin. "Girlfriends, boyfriends, it's all the same... Come here..." he whispered a tone lower, and pulled Akira by the front of his shirt and kissed him again. Only now, he took Touya's upper lip between his, pulling slightly.

Akira trembled despite himself, and decided that this was as divine as moves could go.

The End


End file.
